The Chaos of Stars

No. Why would I comfort her? I take another step back.

That’s when I notice that the mural behind her has turned black. The history of my parents, the triumph of my mother—it’s all gone, swallowed up in darkness. A figure blacker than the black looms up behind Isis, holds out arms, and wraps them around her in the way that I wouldn’t.

It pulls her into the darkness, and I watch.

I just watch, too scared to move.

I do nothing.

Chapter 10

Amun-Re, sitting at the head of the court of the gods, could not make a decision between Set and Horus. They fought bitterly for eighty years, with little ground gained. Gods took sides, but neither Set nor Horus was the clear winner of the throne.

Isis, well-known for her maternal zeal, had been barred from the proceedings. So she disguised herself as an old widow and asked for shelter in Set’s home. Spinning a tale of woe for him, she spoke of her son’s wrongful treatment at the hands of a usurper who stole his inheritance. Set, enraged, declared that such behavior was wrong.

He did it in front of the court of the gods, unwittingly condemning himself.

Clearly he hadn’t yet learned the lesson I knew from the day I could walk: my mother wins every argument.

“DON’T YOU THINK HE’S HOT?”

“I don’t care if he’s hot.”

Tyler smiles smugly at me. “So you do think he’s hot, you just don’t let that influence you.”

“I am holding a nail gun. Do you really want to keep up this conversation?”

She raises her hands in surrender. “We will continue when you are unarmed.”

I glare, turning back to the plywood bracing frames I’m nailing to the wall. The most important parts of design are the ones people never see, and since we finally got approval, I’ve spent the past two nights awake calculating and recalculating and sketching and graphing.

Plus, no sleep means no dreams. No dreams means no worries. I am letting this room consume me and push out thoughts of everything else.

Including inky blackness swallowing my tragic past every night in my dreams.

Including sugar-colored tongues and easy laughter and blue eyes and Ry.

Especially Ry.

He knew. He knew how I felt about relationships, that I just wanted to be friends. And that’s the worst part—I did want to be friends. More than I even realized until he blew it and we couldn’t be friends anymore, and I actually miss him. But he ruined everything. He knew, and he ruined it anyway.

“Whoa, Isadora, the board is officially nailed.” Michelle eyes my work with raised eyebrows. Okay. Maybe someone else should be in charge of the nail gun today. But it’s so satisfying.

“I’ve been texting you all morning,” she says. Even though she’s been right down the stairs the whole time.

“My phone’s dead.” No phone, no infuriatingly chipper texts and messages from Ry asking to meet so he can explain. Phones let people be both lazy and intrusive. Really, they’re a terrible invention. We should go back to messengers. Or smoke signals. Way easier to ignore.

“How close are we?” She surveys the room with a concerned look. Rightly so. I’m getting a little nervous about brashly declaring I could do this. I want to prove myself to her (and to me) so very badly. This is the biggest project I’ve ever undertaken, and I need it to work. I need to show I can do more than color schemes and furniture.

But with the approval delay, we had to start on the framework without blueprints, so until yesterday my prep was pretty much

pointless. Once Michelle got me the room’s actual schematics, I had to compensate with extra bracings because there weren’t enough studs in the drywall to support the weight of the plywood sheets and drop ceilings.

The only one happy about this situation is Tyler, with her infinite supply of “If only we had more studs!” jokes. I set down the nail gun and, not even sure what I’m doing, wrap an arm around her side in some sort of approximation of a hug. “I’m glad you’re here,” I say. She’s keeping me sane.

“Of course you are,” she answers, hugging me back. “I just wish I were—”

“If you say ‘studlier,’ I’m kicking you out.”